Hi all! This is Dennis Moore. I am a long-time Striped Bass surf fisherman who used to live about 1/2 and then 3/4 and then a 2 and now a 3 hour drive to Island Beach State Park in New Jersey. Because of the distance, I haven't been back there for the last 5 years but have gone to Montauk Point on Long Island striper fishing. But I also like to fish for Walleye because they are such a fine eating fish. However, I have not done it for a long time, but want to get back into it. What is the hook you were talking about for Walleye fishing? I'll look forward to your reply.

Tight lines and stay safe,

Dennis Moore

Personally, I hate trebles. Hook myself as much as a fish, especially while trying to remove them from the fishes mouth. My solution is to cut off the welded on hook on a treble. Also have replaced them with single hooks. And most recently with circle hooks, which in my opinion is the best alternative. Yes, you may miss a fish or 2 if you react by trying to set the hook, but its worth it as fish are much easier to un-hook and the chances of damaging a fish is greatly diminished, if catch and release is your thing.
Cheers🐟

awhile back this Canadian guide showed me a little trick. He took a copper Bouyant and put three dots of bright red nail polish on one side. we both had the same line and leader. he fished the one with dots, I fished the plain one. after 1/2 hour I had 1 hit, he had nine fish. I keep a bottle of that nail polish in my box, those dots are on every lure I own. Striper fishing with two buddies I was ahead 14 to zip. they accused me of being in the hole, I moved down to the other end and got another 6 before the bite died. Next time we went fishing I noticed some red dots!! anyone got any other lure tricks?

Fishing for food had been around for a very long time. There are artifacts found in caves both in China and Egypt that indicate that fishing was a common activity and one that primitive peoples depended upon as one source of food. There were also artificial lures, either to directly catch fish or to lure them close for the fisherman to use a spear to capture them. Some of these items were found as part of the funerary items in tombs to ensure that the departed would have a means of capturing their food in their next life.

In one case, contradicting the thought that only men were fishermen, a female burial proved that women were fishers also since a female body was discovered with both hooks and line were discovered under her chin, so she would be able to immediately find it. Also, the use of circle hooks, now only recently making a reappearance, have been in use for more than 20,000 years. There are clear examples of circle hooks found in archaeological digs in both China and Egypt, where this type of early hook was used with hand lines to catch fish, some date back to 2,000 B.C. The Chinese were the first with fishing line made from spun silk.

English tackle shops were selling minnows in the middle of the 18th century, along with bugs and grubs, all made from molten rubber and painted in realistic colors. Spoons appeared in Scandinavia as early as the beginning of the 1700’s. Metal spoons along with metal spinners were being used in the United States as early at the first part of the 19th century.

Modern lure production appeared and marketed by Julio T. Buell, Riley Hastell, W. D. Chapman, and the Enterprise Manufacturing Company. Plugs were commercially made by the Heddon in Michigan and by Pflueger in Ohio. Before this, most lures were hand made by individual craftsmen.

The types of lures were designed to be either the fish’s prey, their curiosity aroused by the offering, or an invasion of their territory, an injured, dying, or fast-moving bait fish. These lures could take the form of jigs, spoons, plugs, artificial flies, LED lures, soft plastic, spinner baits, swimming baits, fish decoys, frogs, rodents, or insects.
Some of the latest include a daisy chain of bait fish as if swimming in a school.

On September 20, 2016, some old circle hooks made from snail shells were found in Okinawa that were dated to be almost 23,000 years old. Radiocarbon dating of some charcoal found in the same layer as these hooks placed the date between 22,380 and 22,770 years old.

In Australia, Archaeologists from the Australian National University found some circle hooks from the Pleistocene era, on Aloi Island, Indonesia, that were dated approximately 12,000-year-old and found as part of grave goods of a female body, which were wrapped around her neck and chin.

These Aloi Island hooks bear an uncanny resemblance to the rotating hooks found in Japan, Australia, Arabia, California, Chile, Mexico and Oceania. It is agreed the same sort of artifacts was developed independently because it was the most fitting form to suit the ecology, rather than being a cultural diffusion.

In modern times, the circle hook has become the more suitable choice because it will only make a connection around the lip or mouth of the fish, thus preventing the deep ingestion of the J type hook and eventual result in a fatality. Second, the hook does not require being jerked hard to be set in the jaw of the fish, but only that the line be pulled quickly that the allows the circle hook to snag the lip or jaw. After the fish has been landed, if the fisherman does not choose to keep it, the removal of the circle hook is much easier and less likely to permanently harm the fish leading to its death.

When I was a pharmaceutical salesman in the Rio Grande Valley, I called on one doctor in San Benito TX, a Dr. Parker, who regularly fished down on the coast of Mexico in and around the mouth of some jungle rivers. Once, while down there fishing for snook, he wasn’t having much luck but did observe two Indians who were fishing in a dugout canoe. One in the front was paddling the canoe along while the Indian in back was fishing or trolling with a line held in his hand.

They were regularly catching snook on their home-made lure which had a balsa body and feathers which Dr. Parker assumed looked like an injured jungle bird. After being allowed to examine their lure, Dr. Parker tried to buy their lure to no avail. They would not take any amount of money for their special, and effective lure. Whether they believed it held some magical, therefore potent, fish appeal, he was unable to determine. They were probably Mayan and spoke a different language than Spanish.

As a sports fisherman, I had always wanted to catch a “keeper” snook but did not have any success until I was 60 years or older, fishing in Florida with my son, Brad. We had put his boat in and motored out past the jetties on the Atlantic side of Florida. We decided to catch some bait by using a Sibike rig. This is a Japanese invention very small monofiliment line with a “daisy-chain” of small flies and hooks.
The idea is to approach a school of bait fish and cast the rig in among the school and rapidly retrieve it and usually you will be able to land 3 to 6 bait fish on each cast, which you then put in a live well on board the boat.

This morning on about the second cast, something much larger hit and broke off his Sibike rig. He told me to quickly get another rod, put on one of the bait fish we had already caught and cast it out in the same area. I hooked up with a larger fish and after fighting it for several minutes landed a snook that was between 10 and 15 pounds and perhaps 30 inches long. I quickly landed this snook and repeated the process. This time I caught another snook of equal size and it jumped a time or two before threw the hook and escaped.

That was the first time I had ever caught a keeper snook, fulfilling a life long dream. Snook are a schooling fish but are very wary of any lure or attempt to be caught. This morning, they were lurking below the school of bait that we were also attempting to harvest for bait. By my offering one of the very fishes on which they were currently feeding, it was much easier to attract them. Just Sayin...RJS